ジェイク・E・リーホワイトギタ

Hello friends, I have finally sat down to write todays lesson. For decades I have studied Jake E Lee’s Whitey 1974 Fender Stratocaster in an effort to expose the facts that are known versus the unknown. Today I deliver the information.

Many retail Jake E Lee Signature models have been manufactured by Fender, Charvel Jackson and ESP with their 1990s JEL Signature. Of all these guitars none of them have ever been an accurate reproduction of Jake E Lee’s White Charvel. The closest and most accurate reproduction was produced by Fernandes in 1983 and made available in Japan in 1984 which i covered in my last blog post The 1984 Fernandes Jake E Lee Guitar ST-65JL Burny

This is an interesting and inflammatory statement for me to make. Truth be told, it all became more of a cash generator for these guitar brands verses and actual experiment in getting history straight. That said, I’m gonna clear it all up for the world in this blog post.

Here is where the history of Jake’s Whitey Charvel begins. It started its life in Fullerton California as a Fender Stratocaster with the below specs.

1974 Fender Strat 3-Tone Sunburst Specifications:

1974 was the last year for the desired "grey-bottom" - pickups with staggered pole pieces. All 3 singlecoil PUs are stamped 1974 and have outputs of N=5,46K, M=5,48K and B=5,45K. The guitar has a 3-way switch, came with black hard shell case with orange interior.

1974 Fender Stratocaster Hardtail 3-Tone-Sunburst Specifications:

Solid alder body
Maple Neck With Rosewood Fretboard with tiltneck-adjustment
Neck Radius: 7.5”
Rosewood fretboard with 21 frets
3x original "greybottom" singlecoil pickups
Hardtail bridge w/ 2-7/32” string spacing E-to-E incl. bridge cover
Scale 25.5”
Large 70s style headstock
6x Fender "F-Style" tuners
Incl. orig. black Fender tolex case with orange lining

Transformation

Jake E Lee ( Jakey Lou Williams ) was there in Hollywood California at the epicenter of RockNRoll in the Van Halen era of LA’s Sunset Strip. I’m not gonna spend time explaining Jake E Lee’s relationships with this person or that person. I also wont spend any words here going over the different bands he was in in Los Angeles in those days. Jake E Lee himself has discussed his place in each of those bands in great detail in various interviews. Instead I’ll made your lesson today only about The Jake E Lee Whitie guitar.

Here is the story of the transformation of Jake’s ‘74 strat hardtail into the Chavel Jake E Lee White guitar that was used while Jake was in The Ozzy Osourne Band. This is how Jake E Lee told it and I translated it to the short version…

Jake E Lee worked at music store when he was young and tried a bunch of Strats. The owner said he would give Jake a good deal so Jake could pick out something he liked. He played all the fenders there and walked off with the hardtail Strat.
Jake owned the 74 hardtail Strat in LA in the early 80s and used it in all its 3-tone sunburst glory. All the rockers in Hollywood had flashy guitars so Jake was after a little individuality. Jake was friends and roommates with John his buddy that worked in the Charvel shop in San Dimas Glendora CA. John shaved the big Strat headstock down and put a Charvel logo on the headstock. Needless to say the guitar got paint and a full a remodel. It became The Whitey. If you look close at Ozzy concert footage you can see that there is a 3 bolt fender style neck plate on the real Whitey guitar. Go check out vintage live footage of Ozzy from the 1980s theres is some technical things to learn.

Technical Challenges To Converting A Tame Strat into A RockNRoll Monster

So there we have it. Now you know what was under the hood of Jake’s Whitey before it became a RockNRoll guitar. There are a couple problems someone will encounter with a vintage Strat crankin out Metal.

Firstly, if you look at those specification of the original fender you can’t skip over a few limiting factors one would encounter if they attempted to use a stock 1974 strat hardtail as a rocknroll guitar.

1 - The Fender factory fingerboard radius of that ‘74 Stratocaster was 7.5”. Fingerboard radius is the curvature of the fingerboard across the neck, from the lowest string to the highest string, and just like the radius of a circle, it is described in inches.

Johnny from AXN ( quote )
Ha Ha… For rocknroll guitar players the curve of the fretboard on those 1970s fender stratocasters makes it very tough to bend strings and play fast. So the question becomes
“How the heck did Jake play all those bends and metal riffs using a neck with a 7.5 fingerboard radius?”
The answer is that a very popular modification in the 80's was to take the older strats with those 7.5” radiuses and plane them out to a flatter one typically 9.5”.
It’s my belief that Jake had at least two early rounds of modifications. The modification to the radius and I think a bridge upgrade done years before the white paint and headstock mods done at Charvel Jackson.

In addition to this modification the other obvious changes needed to convert this fender burst into a fire breathing metal guitar was to add an aftermarket brass Charvel era hardtail bridge.

Ok so all the recent Jake E Lee Signature guitars sold by Charvel/Fender are not accurate in many ways. These guitars are meant to look like Jake’s but almost non of the specifications are near accurate to a 1974 Strat. So one would ask the question… how do those releases by Charvel end up feeling like Jake’s Whitey? Well they don’t. Sorry to say. They just look like it.

The above photo is showing you the real bridge. As owned by Jake.

I’ve owned and sold 4 of these authentic 1980s hardtail bridges. I have one left of these first incarnation of Jake’s hardtail fixed bridge i’ve kept ( pictured ). I also have notes from the shop foreman that machined the very first bunch of bridges for Charvel Jackson in the 1980s and I own his notes on the spects.

Long story short without the right string spacing on the hardtail and without some specifics from the 74 strat you don’t have the feel of Jakes baby.

Let us not forget that Jake’s Whitey Guitar was a 1974 Fender Stratocaster with a wide 2-7/32” string spacing from the Fender factory. Johnny - AXN Guitars

There more details on our Jakes Hardtail Bridge at the following link if you care to delve into that detail further.

Link To Our Page Discussing The Jake E Lee Bridge

Ok girls I posted this info into my blog for you. I hope you enjoyed it.

In the rest of this space i have put a really rare and cool interview with Jake E Lee from 1986. Jake talks about a lot and its well worth the read. Sorry about the green pages but everyone likes to use content without crediting the guys that did the work… LOL me I found it after after 30+ yrs ;-) .. thanks and come back to this blog for more.

Thanks Johnny

The Following : The balance of this blog Post will contain the Guitar World November 1986 Article about Jake E Lee. Its great … read it!